Twenty years ago, Avis Shapiro considered herself a radical activist, willing to go to jail for liberal causes.
Today, she finds herself uncomfortably on the other side of the political spectrum, one of a growing number of suburbanites who are raising questions about how the problem of homelessness should be solved-and more important-where.
“Being an activist is part of the way I always saw myself,” said Shapiro, who was arrested in the ’70s during anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. “The answers seemed easier then, but having children changes things. They have to be your first priority.”
A Flossmoor neighbor of Shapiro’s, Diane Kessler, doesn’t understand such fears.
“Turning your back on people who need help is really not an option,” said Kessler, a 27-year village resident. “No one is interested in your children. . . . All they want is a place to sleep, a hot meal and to get in from the cold.”
The moral problem of homelessness tugs at good people everywhere, and it’s harder to ignore when transients are sleeping at the Arlington Heights train station or selling Streetwise in front of the Jewel in Skokie.
Flossmoor became the latest community to grapple with the problem when the Flossmoor Community Church was turned into a temporary homeless shelter site one night a week. The shelter, which opened last year, has touched off a clash that has pitted neighbor against neighbor and resident against clergy, just as it has done in Woodstock, Cary, Schaumburg and River Forest.
Supporters like Kessler feel that ministering to the homeless is a moral duty, a way of living their religion. Most opponents care about their families more than the homeless, even at the risk of being politically incorrect.
In Flossmoor, the leader of the opposition is Cynthia Grazian, an attorney who lives near the Flossmoor Community Church.
Grazian recalls jogging one morning when she was unnerved by the sight of a stranger peering through a neighbor’s window. The man was a guest at the shelter, run by Public Action to Deliver Shelter. He thought he could earn some money raking leaves and just wanted to make sure the owners were awake before ringing the bell.
The stranger was startling, but not nearly as startling as the fact that a shelter could open in her neighborhood of $300,000 homes with no notice. Grazian and people on her side of the issue are edgy about people with possible drug, alcohol and mental problems coming into the neighborhood. They have nagging fears about AIDS and tuberculosis, about guns and loitering, especially when their children are playing outside.
“I’ve been called a bigot, a racist and just about every name you can imagine,” said Grazian, whose words were echoed by others uncomfortable with the shelter, “but the only label I’ll own up to is that of concerned parent.”
PADS operates 14 sites in the southern suburbs. One night each week, two congregations take in the homeless, opening their doors at 7 p.m., serving them dinner and sending them on their way by 7 the next morning. Flossmoor is the only south suburban site where the organization has met resistance, a fact that makes Kessler cringe.
“I’m so embarrassed for my community. . . . It’s as if people want to build a fence around Flossmoor,” said Kessler, a volunteer who works the 3-to-7 a.m. shift at Temple Anshe Shalom in Olympia Fields, another PADS site.
Flossmoor Mayor Frank Maher appointed a citizens advisory committee to study the problem, which met for the first time last week.
Regardless of the committee’s findings, such intolerance is troubling, said Greg Dell, pastor of Euclid Avenue Methodist Church in Oak Park.
Dell saw a similar scenario a year ago in his area. Before the River Forest Village Board would approve a PADS site at Grace Lutheran Church, it imposed regulations that included a professional security force, separate shower facilities and a prohibition on sharing toothbrushes.
“My sense is that there is a backlash, and it is rooted in fear,” said Dell, co-chairman of the Tri-Village PADS. “The homeless are not all that different from the rest of us, and that makes us feel very vulnerable. If we make them drug addicts who urinate on the front lawn, then it’s easier to turn them into a `they’ instead of an `us.’ “
Just who makes up the suburban homeless is a key element of the debate, and the profile varies, depending on where you get your statistics.
Advocates say the homeless population looks more like the folks at a shopping mall than on lower Wacker Drive. According to the Illinois Coalition to End Homelessness, the Cook County suburbs have 18,000 transients, with twice as many seeking shelter than a year ago. In that group are about 5,000 teens, 6,000 families with children and 7,000 single adults. The fastest-growing segment are women and children, who make up 43 percent.
The homeless include the mentally ill (30 percent) and substance abusers (40 percent), according to the coalition. But those numbers can be deceiving because they apply only to the adult population and many are both.
Opponents say the numbers of the homeless with mental illness and/or addictions are in the 65 to 80 percent range and that many PADS clients are chronic street people pushed out of city shelters.
Many question whether churches and synagogues-“guests in our neighborhood,” as one put it-are appropriate shelter sites. They see the congregations as forcing their versions of altruism on taxpayers and resent the fear they feel.
Some city attorneys will tell you off the record that if they oppose the shelters, they could be slapped with lawsuits for interfering with religious freedom.
Even without litigation, things can get nasty. Grazian said that since she has become a critic of PADS, she has received harassing calls and has been spat on.
“The moral superiority of some of these people has really opened my eyes,” she said.
Most supporters say they are sincere, caring people and such humanitarian efforts are at the very core of their faith. “If you’re not responding to the needs of the homeless, then what are you doing? What do you stand for?” Dell asked. “You’re left with nothing but a religious club.”
All of the talk, however, hasn’t produced a solution. Homeless shelters, many agree, are not the definitive answer.
“People know that `a hot and a cot’ is just a Band-Aid,” said John Donahue of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “We need to find better ways to help people segue back to society.”
That’s what Grace Lutheran had in mind when the board voted this year to withdraw from the PADS program. The congregation is channeling its energies into establishing transitional housing, along with other services, such as job counseling.
“Some people think we buckled under pressure,” said Pastor Dean Lueking, “but actually we were ready to move on to the next step.”
Lueking offered some advice for clergy facing the same battle. “Be faithful, be patient, listen to views and help people do the right things for the right reasons.”
